The microelectronic, such as semiconductor and optoelectronic, industries have seen the requirement for smaller and smaller device geometries over the past several years. While in some areas of device fabrication sub-micron device geometries have been common place for a number of years, in other areas, such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs), organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and a variety of radio frequency (Rf) and microwave devices (e.g. RFICs/MMICs, switches, couplers, phase shifters, SAW filters and SAW duplexers), such device geometries are only recently approaching sub 10 micron levels.
With such smaller geometries comes a requirement for dielectric materials with low dielectric constants to reduce or eliminate any cross-talk between adjacent signal lines or between a signal line and a device feature (e.g. a pixel electrode) due to capacitive coupling. Although many low dielectric (low-K) materials are available for microelectronic devices, for optoelectronic devices such materials must also be broadly transparent in the visible light spectrum, not require high temperature processing (greater than 300° C.) that would be incompatible with other elements of such an optoelectronic device, and be both low-cost and feasible for large scale optoelectronic device fabrication.
Thus, it would be desirable to have a material capable of forming a self-imageable layer to avoid the need for depositing a separate imaging layer. Such material should also be easy to apply to a substrate, have a low dielectric constant (3.9 or less) and thermal stability to temperatures in excess of 250° C.